


Cintra's princess

by Jean_G



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, Magic, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, Strong Female Characters, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:27:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25493881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean_G/pseuds/Jean_G
Summary: I loved The Witcher, especially the episode 4 with the banquet. The powers of the princesses of Cintra are awesome and I wanted to write them a fan fic. I took it as an opportunity to make Jaskier a mentor because I think the role would suit him really well.Irma is a distant ancestor of Cirilla and one of the first to have powers, (I see her as a mix between Queen Calanthe and Princess Cirilla.)Is attempted an alliance between Cintra and Nilfgaard which, obviously, is doomed to turn out badly (otherwise we would never have had the book).
Kudos: 2





	Cintra's princess

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Princesse de Cintra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25319161) by [Jean_G](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean_G/pseuds/Jean_G). 



> My first tongue isn't english so it may not always make sense. if you have any correction to make, please do it in the comment

In the kingdom of Cintra, the royal castle was in turmoil. In the kitchens dozens of chefs were busy preparing large quantities of snacks and pastries for the upcoming event. In the corridors, the servants were clearing floors and furniture of the last trace of dust. In the royal workshop, the designer was making a few final touches to the royal wardrobe planned for the occasion.  
Far from all the hustle and bustle, in the gardens, the youngest members of the royal family were enjoying the rays of the late afternoon sun. There were the twins, two little terrors of a dozen years, and their closest cousin, the young Princess Sophie. All three were playing in the fountain, under the watchful gaze of the queen taking tea in the living room, next to the window.  
The gardens were immaculate, well maintained, with bushes planted and pruned with geometric rigor. The only tree that no longer looked very healthy was the sour cherry tree. It was an old tree planted by the first queen of Cintra. He was old and half dead, but the gardener was forbidden to prune him. In front of the cherry tree stood Princess Irma, 16 years old, who struggled to revive the branches of the poor tree with her magic. The princess was trying, but she did not know if the slightly darker tint of the leaves came from her imagination or her powers. When the time for her evening lesson approached, the princess saluted the tree by watering it before leaving the gardens, disappointed with her lack of progress. She could try again every day until the date of the event, she would succeed, it was a way for her to prove herself. She left the gardens, oblivious to the sour cherries that now decorated the still leafy branches of the tree or the black bark that was starting to climb up the trunk.

Two days later and two days before the event, Irma was finishing to fill out the last documents relating to the alliance between the kingdoms of Cintra and Nilfgaard. These two kingdoms were the most powerful on the continents, located at the two eastern and western ends of the continent and separated by a dozen much smaller states, their exchanges were important and their good relations were essentials for the peace of the continent and the survival of the kingdoms between them.  
On the commercial level, this alliance was very positive and would bring a lot to the two kingdoms in addition to significantly increasing the number of communication routes crossing the continent. This alliance was not yet official, but it was already giving her a lot of work. The Ministry of Commerce was in charge of Irma since she was 14 years old, she liked working in this sector, it was much more interesting than the legislative sector of the blood crimes which she had managed to get rid of with a good stroke of luck. It was the twins who took care of it now, with the help of their guardians. Her years of legislative work, however, gave Irma a good idea of what should be in the trial report on the corner of her desk.

The trial had followed an assassination attempt. She already knew the facts: a pitcher of poisoned water, a magic exercise during which she had forgot to hydrate herself as she should, then a watered tree at the end of the exercise. After that, it all happened very quickly: black bark, a cry in the gardens. When she came running from her lesson room, almost all the bark of the cherry tree had already darkened.

At the window, in the gardens, the tortuous shape of a poor dead tree, the sour cherry tree between the roots of which she had grown. Next to it, between a low hedge and two roses, a new tree, a young sour cherry tree almost a meter tall. This new tree had made a difficult arrival among the living, the sour cherries from which it was born carried a large dose of poison, the shoots had been torn from their toxic nuclei by the magic of Irma, their fibers boiling of magic and poison intermingling themselves and going up in stems and leaves to create a viable tree.

Irma grabbed the report, skipping the useless, limiting herself to what was necessary: charges, defense, sentence. Unsurprisingly, capital punishment. Irma had nothing to say, it was not her responsibility. The culprit had cumulated assassination attempt and crime against the State, the legal power was in the hands of the magistrates, with the charges, nothing could have saved the poor man from the guillotine.

The princess closed the file and put it in a dedicated filing cabinet in one of the shelves. Someone knocked on the door. It was Jaskier, her tutor. It was almost dinner time and Irma was having supper with him that night. She was not hungry. In the evening, usually, she ate with her little sister Sophie, her parents when they were not taken up by their responsibilities as monarchs, her big brother George and her uncle when they were not away, her cousins the twins and any other family members or visiting nobility.

In the corridors of the castle, the princess no longer even paid attention to the revisited neo-Romanesque architecture that she would miss so much when she would live in Nilfgaard. The massive stone walls and the broken barrel vaults echoed the steps and forced the voice to descend to the level of the whisper. In the corridor you could distinctly hear the progression of two people towards the dining room: the princess whose heels struck the stone in a clear and regular snap and her tutor whose boots beat the ground in short, deaf blows. Neither guards nor servants were ever heard, walking on the carpet intended for their use against the walls.

Opposite the corridors, the living rooms, bedrooms, and other living rooms were often covered with tapestries protecting the air from the freshness of the stones, the ceilings were low and the floor was polished parquet, tiled floor, carpet or other materials. less raw than stone. The room where Irma and Jaskier went to eat was equipped with a large fireplace where a fire was already burning and a table where Irma's mother, the queen, sometimes liked to have tea. The west wall was covered with windows and gave a very nice view of the gardens and the purplish sunset sky. When they entered, the table was already set and a servant arrived with his arms full of a large steaming tureen. Irma held the door for him and he hurried out of the room after having put the tureen in the center of the table and having filled the two plates.

The meal began calmly, with light discussions on the progress of the affairs of the Kingdom. Irma adored Jaskier, he was funny, passionate, unbeatable in physics, philosophy and social sciences and surprisingly, he could be of very good advice as regards magic even if he didn't practice it himself. He was the one who taught Irma everything and she could claim to know him well. She was pretty sure he was not human, but he was making a lot of effort to adjust to their habits and it was something she knew how to appreciate. If he had asked to eat with her, which was rare, it was because he had something to say to her. Sure enough, a few minutes later, after she had served another soup, he announced that he was going to stop being her tutor. He had taught her everything she needed for the role she was about to take on, and she was able to lead by herself whatever deepening she could feel necessary in her studies. "You are strong and intelligent," he told her, "I believe you can overcome any obstacle that will arise before you, whether in your reign or in your life. I will no longer be there to support you in case of a problem, but remember to keep your head up in the face of adversity, even with blood and mud up to your knees. Whether it is with or without your title, when everything will be collapsing, and nothing left to hold on to, it will be up to you to serve as support to raise up human dignity by your arm's length ”.

God, how she hated his misfortune predictions. The message was clear, no matter what will fall on her, he would never be there to help her land on her feet again. It was unfortunate, but she would live with it. After all, there was nothing to fear, no imminent threats and no problems that could not be managed with a few administrative prowess and a good deal of work. The worst that could happen was not all that bad, especially after securing such a lasting peace with the Nilfgaard alliance that would be formalized at the event.

The next evening, the day before the event, Irma was with Sophie in her room. Sophie wore a pretty white ruffle dress with red and purple bows, the colors of Cintra and Nilfgaard. She was spinning her steering wheels to the rhythm of Irma's applause and the room was filling with chuckles that were no doubt heard in the hallway.  
She would make boys falls at the event with her porcelain face framed by her light dark blond ringlets falling down her back in a cascade of brilliant curls. Sophie had agreed to lend a hand to the staging Irma had planned. Part of the event would be in small committee and Irma was to demonstrate her magic, she had organized a staging during which she would raise the water from the fountain in large sheaves and grow flowers. The whole family would be there and she was looking forward to showing them what she could do. In the meantime, she helped her little sister to take off her complicated dress. They could have asked for help from a servant to remove the dress, but they did so only when necessary. They would make very pitiful leaders if they did not know how to take care of most of their needs themselves. Sophie took advantage of the fact that Irma placed the different parts of her dress on the sewing bust to try to escape and delay her bedtime. Unfortunately for her, Irma saw her and made an exemplary tackle, blocking her on the ground while she tried to crawl towards freedom, in vain.

After getting her little sister to bed, Irma went to greet the twins in their bedroom. They were playing chess and the outcome of the game was already more or less decided. It was Sacha who won, when Thaïs saw Irma he immediately left the board to offer her a game of poker, which she was happy to accept. They were playing with big tubes of ten and twenty cents, so they kept a stake while remaining reasonable. Sacha distributed the cards under the watchful eye of his brother and his cousin, they knew each other well and they had all been caught at least once in the midst of cheating. Sacha was losing. Contrary to popular opinion, he was not the prodigy son of the king’s brother. The first reason for this was that the rumor came from the much less stingy tutor of Sacha's compliment compared to that of Thaïs. The second reason was that contrary to what the court thought, Sacha was a girl and not a boy. The costume was authorized for most events of secondary importance before the age of fourteen, so the twins had always managed to appear at events wearing the same costumes. It added to the disturbing look they liked to have to make fun of the guests. Irma was already jubilant imagining the head that the Countess de Bellivière would make when she saw her “prince charming” in a dress, the nasty girl was fantasizing about Sacha for too long.  
She smirked. She didn't have the best cards, but she still thought she could win. Outside, in the gardens, the organizer strictly watched the placement of the last umbrellas to shelter the guests from the sun and a wooden stage in a corner so that the musicians could play and put their instruments down safe from humidity. Interrupting Irma's thoughts, Thaïs threw himself on her, uttering a great exclamation, tearing away the ace of heart that she had hidden in the folds of her dress and ending the game. Irma was annoyed to have been discovered, but she did not let anything appear and left them in their bursts of laughter while returning to her room with a rapid step.

The day of the party finally arrived. Irma had gone to bed reasonably early the night before, but the excitement that was already running through her veins had kept her awake for hours after her poker game.  
The weather was fine, she got up and washed, then she had lunch while re-reading the protocol to pay her respects to her future parents-in-law. She was then dressed in a sophisticated dress with several layers and a corset, it was heavy and stuffy, she could not move around much, but it was only for the public part of the party. She had even been made up, something that happened very rarely since she was allergic to lead.

The morning was long but joyful, Irma spent long hours sipping a fruit cocktail while listening to her lady-in-waiting reporting to her the actions of the Countess de Bellivière. Obviously, she was drowning in shame, Irma's lips were stretched by guilty pleasure fueled by a somewhat childish rivalry with the countess. Irma received many congratulations and was able to see very distant cousins whom she had almost forgotten. It was sunny and people were happy. Irma was also happy, with the rapid pulse of excitement and the ideas a little confused by the crowd and the hubbub. In a corner in the shade she succeeds with her lady-in-waiting to catch a glimpse of the king and queen of Nilfgaard in full discussion with her parents under an umbrella around tea and cupcakes. From a distance, the king had the build of a Roman general with broad shoulders and a thick chest, he was massive, the queen on the contrary had a very thin body and a stuck-up gait. Irma did not manage to see them well but she would have many other opportunities since she would soon be living with them. She quickly found herself seated at the table enjoying appetizers while listening to a baron explaining her duty as a woman. It was not pleasant, but what she found even worse was the cupcakes. They were chocolate and raspberry flavoured, and on top, a sugar goose leaned its neck over a cherry. The problem was there, the goose was the animal of the Nilfgaard coat of arms and the cherry the fruit of that of Cintra. Everything in these cupcakes shouted the desire to please Nilfgaard. She didn't like it, not at all, yet it was childish to stop at cupcakes on a day like this, but it showed the filth behind the silk of nobility and the lowering of the nation for an awkward alliance. Irma didn't like it, the kingdom of Cintra was big, rich and prosperous, far above the bitter looks of the court of Nilfgaard.

In the early afternoon, when the first part of the party was over and the royal families withdrew to prepare for the second in smaller groups, Irma took apart the little Sophie to tell her that the staging organized the day before for the demonstration of magic was canceled. With a tense smile, she said "The audience is not really what I expected". Sophie had shrugged: originally, Irma was the one taking this demonstration to heart, not her. She was still surprised, her big sister had spent hours preparing this demonstration to finally reduce it to the bare essentials.

Right after, Irma went back to her room where she could finally get rid of the unnecessary layers of fabric and of her makeup. Mixed with her sweat, the foundation had the effect of wet plaster that would have started to dry on her skin and she would instinctively want to remove it with a spatula. The princess sat down at her dressing table and struggled to remove her make-up with a basin of hot water and the help of a servant. When the work was done, the princess was able to put on her formal dress. It was much simpler, the corset was less rigid and the fewer layers of fabric, noble enough for a wedding but not reserved for tapestry at a public event.

In the garden the crowd of nobles had given way to a few tables and a dozen individuals, only the close royal families and the group of musicians in charge of entertainment remained. It was windy and the children under the age of eight went out to kite. For others, it was time for the exchange of formal civilities, the exchange of gifts and forms of respect recited like poetry. Irma bowed to the king and queen of Nilfgaard, praise, praise and other sales pitch falling from her mouth like a shower of dried petals. The king gave her a polite smile that did not reach his eyes and the queen remained indifferent, rough and upright in her seat. Irma then went to receive the respects of some members of her future in-laws family on another table where she could watch the children playing cat. She dreamed of going there too: when the oldest were allowed to go to play they often made hide and seek, she was generally the first to be found and she would spend the rest of the game laughing at the wolf, having herself saw all of the hiding places that the wolf seemed unable to find. She listened to yet another noble recite her respects and admiration, conscientiously tucking down his name and title with those of the others in a corner of her mind before offering them a false smile that she knew was far more convincing than the King of Nilfgaard's.  
Appearances were one of the major pieces in the games of politics and she mastered the subject well: A big smile, the head tilted a bit to the side and the corner of the eyes slightly folded, the shoulders back and the back straight, the legs crossed, arms loose and hands relaxed. She absently noted that at the next table the twins had taken all the sugar and calmly watched the guests grimacing while drinking their coffees. They both wore the serious and impassive air which they used to cover their amusement.

When the time for the demonstration arrived, the young children were gathered like little sheep and sat on a blanket in the grass in front of their parents. Irma got up from her chair, dusted off her dress and sat in the center of the garden. She was stressed out, using her powers was like moving a muscle that you don't usually use, she could do it, but sometimes it took her several tries because she didn't always focus on the right element. In the middle of the garden, under the heavy afternoon sun, Irma concentrated, drawing her energy from her lower abdomen, from her guts, and pulling, unfolding it like a spider's web. Her magic was raw, much wilder than that of magicians using incantations, it was an extension of her being, of her soul. Through her unfolded magic, Irma could feel the earth, the way it teemed with life and pulsed like a human heart. Her magic reached the water in the fountain and she diffused it into every bit of matter she wanted to control. Finally ready, Irma yanked out, tearing the water out of her basin and shapinging it into a ring around her before starting to throw it upwards in the form of large jets that she repeatedly folded up, forming complex geometric shapes.

Kneading the material, bathing it in her energy and bending it to her will, Irma was in her element. Finally she gathered all the water into a single sphere which she twirled like a top until it took the form of a large vortex. she made it grow before exploding it into thousands of droplets of water forming a thick fog. When Irma allowed the fog to finally return to the pool, she was holding in her left hand a hazel branch that had taken the place of the cut flowers in the initial demonstration. She had thought to take a branch of cherry tree to recall Cintra's coat of arms, but she had already planted a cherry tree in the garden this week and no more was needed, the gardener would have cried. Under the mostly impressed gaze of her audience and the stoic face of the Queen of Nilfgaard and a few secondary members of the two royal families, Irma then revived the branch, giving it back buds, then leaves and finally flowers, bringing back life to the dying cells of the branch. With energy and force, in a single vertical movement, she planted the base of the branch in the ground, connecting it to the dense network of roots running through the gardens, connecting the plants, the fungus, the earth and its microorganisms. The princess took note to make it clear to their poor gardener before leaving for Nilfgaard that unlike the cherry tree, this tree was not the child of its magic and was therefore to be treated like any other tree in the gardens. She bowed to her audience before returning to her seat, ready to receive a few more polite expressions before having to move on to the next stage of the party.

The chapel was full with the Cintra royal family on the left and the Nilfgaard royal family on the right. Outside, behind the closed entrance doors, Irma and her father were chatting quietly as they waited for the time to start the ceremony. Contrary to what some of the public party guests thought, Irma was not stressed out, a little tense about the importance of the event, but not stressed out. A wedding was one official ceremony among many, a duty and a necessity. The paperwork had already been completed, only the vows remained: a formality. She couldn't wait to see her husband's face for the first time though. Of course she would do with what she would get, but she hoped that the Prince of Nilfgaard wasn't some flabby tongued old man.

The music began and Irma came in holding the elbow of her father the king. With her head held high and her free hand clutching her dress to walk freely, she looked around for her future husband.  
At the end of the central aisle stood the cardinal in charge of marriage, the queen of Nilfgaard and her son the prince, Irma's future husband: Friedrich II of Nilfgaard. When the princess laid her eyes on him, she thought her heart was going to explode, it began to drummer into her chest, seized with a very inconvenient panic in the eyes of the poor princess trying to look stoic under her much too thin veil.

A child, for God's sake! He couldn't be more than seven years old, he was younger than most of her cousins. His cheeks were round and red, his hands crossed behind his back, and he was rocking from foot to foot as if the short time he had already spent in front of the altar was enough to bore him. Swallowing the pill with difficulty, Irma walked to the altar, a publicity smile stuck to her face, praying that the ceremony would be brief.

Much to her misfortune, the blessing lasted forever, she counted every second of it, cursing the organizer who hadn't thought of providing chairs for the royal couple and their respective parents. When it finally came to the exchange of consents she felt like if her legs were cast in concrete, her hips at least seventy years old and her feet liquefied. She repeated the cardinal's words in a daze, realizing that she would have to kiss her little husband at the end of the exchange. He made his vows too, not even understanding what he was promising. Here was the problem, Irma realized as she listened to the little prince speak in his bird's voice: He didn’t understand what was happening, was not really consenting in this marriage. Irma blamed herself for not insisting when her parents refused to tell her about her fiancé, she had been overly naive, deceived by her blind faith in the future, convinced that everything would always be fine. The poor idiot she had been.

An ugly phrase pierced the mist of negative thoughts of the princess: “You can kiss the bride”. Irma crouched down in front of the little boy, lifting her veil and kissing him on the nose, daring the cardinal to correct her. Her new mother-in-law didn't react either, unperturbed, wearing the same stern look she had worn when Irma had recited her her respects.

The rest of the ceremony was blurry and the rest of the day foggy. Irma was vaguely aware that she had kept Sophie on her lap all afternoon as she taught her doll to drink tea, peoples could have spocken to her, but she couldn't know. Trapped in her thread of gloomy thoughts, the princess did not see the hours pass and soon it was the evening that began. After the meal, Irma opened the dance with her father before indulging in the waltzes, exchanging partners every eighteen steps, the mind attached to the music, the thoughts fixed on the steps to be taken despite the automatism with which she could execute them. Thinking of nothing, keeping herself away from her worries and being finally able to force herself to detach from reality. At the main table, Prince Friedrich looked like he was about to fall asleep. Part of her wanted to stay on the dance floor as long as possible to delay when she should go to the bridal suite for the honeymoon. Ouch, the very thought made her quake. But another part of her remembered that the little one currently slumped on an armrest was not allowed to leave the evening without his new wife and that the longer she remained on the dance floor, the later he would go to bed. Greeting her partner at the end of the dance, she went to greet the two royal couples before leaving, holding her little husband by the hand.

The bridal suite was as horrible as she had feared: located on the ground floor but taking up the two floors of the palace in height, raising the ceiling to ten meters and the windows to almost as much, a bed far too large, covered in red satin sheets, a cupboard containing the new wardrobe accompanying the wedding, a door to the bathroom and large paintings from which her ancestors gazed at her critically. This last detail in particular made her particularly uncomfortable and she wondered who could have had such a twisted idea. Refusing to sleep in a corset she set off in search of decent underwear to sleep with a little boy. In horror, she went deeper and deeper into the drawer, going from string bras to lace panties, never finding anything even passable. In the bathroom Friedrich had started brushing his teeth after changing into a loose linen shirt. With a sigh of relief, Irma pulled out some thick closed panties and a sports bra at the size of her developing breast from an anvelope. The tailor must had discreetly added it at the bottom of the drawer a few hours earlier when he learned about the husband's age. She put them on behind the screen, freeing herself from her tight corset and her three layers of dresses. Friedrich had finished brushing his teeth and was already starting to climb on the oversized bed. She could then go to the bathroom and undo her too tight coiffure, brush her teeth and wash her face. She eventually went to bed next to her new husband, six and a half years old, in a sports bra and thick panties, in red silk sheets on an all too large bed.

Her arms behind her head and her eyes wide open, Princess Irma gazed up at the moonlit ceiling, trying to discern what was depicted on the fresco that covered it. "I'm afraid" then arose Friedrich's little voice next to her. Without taking her eyes off the ceiling, she replied “Me too”. Because there was a lot to fear: her new parents-in-laws too strict looking with whom she would soon have to live, the future development of her relationship with her husband, the toddler next to her, and finally, the future in general. Because things weren't going to end right, things couldn't be going well.

"Could you look under the bed to verify that there are no monsters?"  
Ah: she was all alone this time.


End file.
